Great, so far (and not only because I enjoy gloating secretly at the sight of someone drumming their fingers waiting for a web page to load on their $1700.00 Macbook Air). I installed OS X 10.5.5 via iDeneb, and did pretty much everything you recommend here, except I haven’t yet updated to 10.5.7, due to having only a 4G SSD to work with. I did get to 10.5.7 on a 16G SD card, but it crashed constantly, as opposed to my current install which has been very solid. I’ve got a 32G RunCore SSD on backorder, which will hopefully enable me to get fully up to date, and also–if all goes well–allow me to do the install via BOOT-132 instead of iDeneb.

Aside from establishing and maximizing my geek credibility, I actually use the Mini in circumstances where anything else would be impossible, particularly the NY subway at rush hour, in which I spend more time than I’d care to calculate. Writing is my labor of love (one of them, anyway), and being able to work any time, any place, has changed my life and allowed me to dare hope I’ll havea finished novel before the end of the summer. For those geeky enough to care, I use Mellel as my word processor, because it’s faster, lighter, and better able to handle a 400+ page document than anything short of MS Word, which I wouldn’t touch with a latex glove.

The only significant problem I’ve run across is that somewhere between the installation and a few days ago all wireless connectivity stopped working. This took the form of the Airport icon in the menu bar being permanently off, and either freezing the system or ignoring the command if I try to turn it on, either from there or the Network preference pane. Not critical (since there’s as yet no wi-fi access on the A train), but I’m curious why that might have happened, if anyone out there has a clue.

It’s actually a home-made sticker. I would’ve opted for the glossy sticker sheets but ended up picking the wrong one at the store so I just used clear vynil sticker (same stuff I use to cover my paperbacks 🙂 ). I just grabbed images from the Apple website: “Macbook” from the Macbook banner and “Mini” from the Mac Mini banner. They’re black with gradient effect, I just reversed the colors – did the whole thing in Word:Mac 2008.

Nice one… I’m getting a Compaq 702EA netbook in the next few days, and will be following in your footsteps and hackintoshing it. I’ve set up a blog and a Twitter account to document my progress, in case it’s not just a rebadged HP Mini…http://paqbook.wordpress.comhttp://twitter.com/PaqBook

Please let me know if you’re looking for a writer for your weblog.
You have some really good articles and I feel I would be a good
asset. If you ever want to take some of the
load off, I’d absolutely love to write some material
for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine.
Please send me an email if interested. Cheers!